Bika LIMS development stops. Long live

2017 Saw the Bika LIMS Collective facing a number of challenges: Where to with Bika 4, a wider growing fork in the code, and how to correct our 2002 naivety in naming the proud new LIMS the same as project founders Bika Lab Systems?

TLDR; It all came together in the FOSS herding-of-cats kind of way with Senaite. Broadly speaking, the LIMS user interface is being separated into a JavaScript front-end to the existing and improved Bika LIMS as back-end that already encapsulates matured lab workflow, rules and security. Intended to lower threshold for newbs, offer more flexibility and improved performance.

Bika 3 and 4

The Bika code was becoming bloated and slow, difficult to maintain, requiring good Plone skills. Repo management got increasingly complex and documentation was falling behind. The usual symptoms crying out for the dreaded re-factoring.

With these pain points addressed, Bika would be next level ready.

Goal

The goal of the project was thus established to:

Engineer and distribute Bika LIMS 4, a high through-put Open Source web based LIMS that, in both functionality and code, is easy to use, code, learn, maintain and integrate.

Objectives

To improve efficiency, functionally would be kept to the core LIMS of commonly required ISO lab functions, with add-ons for specialised disciplines. In the code we would recycle as much of Gaob 'King' Bika 3, and use standardised technologies and frameworks for new code. Scalability would offer Big Lab performance, but the LIMS stays suitable for small labs and self starters.

Dynamic documentation remains an objective and high priority. A community project could be used to bring the user manual up to date before release management makes it compulsory to include manual updates in the code from where the manual gets dynamically refreshed when functionality gets added or improved.

In the last instance, Bika’s Restful application interface was to be used for tighter integration with ERP, EMR etc, and if needs be, the necessary customisations required for FOSS ERP sourced from the community and standardised.

Naralabs' performance and Bika Health improvements from pressure cooker Bika Health collaborations in Zimbabwe and Liberia were merged in Senaite that takes up the full mature and consolidated Bika LIMS back-end of lab business logic. Excellent code economy.

A huge amount of work got done second semester 2017, reminiscent of the exciting first Bika years. Development is already up to speed for 2018 with hugely useful Bika Cannabis and Water functions also being migratedby Mike, Lunga (Webtide) and Bika Lab Systems. Ears and eyes on stilts for release announcements everybody.

Not to confuse the Internets, the Bika | Senaite labels will a la Odoo name conversion often end up together before the cat herd drifts into line. Some might take a bit longer, Bika Cannabis is just taking off. This will pan out over the next year - all advice welcome.

What's in a name?Bika Lab Systems Pty Ltd and the Bika LIMSs

We were naive starting out in 2002, the Internet rocks still soft, when we named both project and company risking the start-up 'Bika', inspired by indigenous South African diversity. Later, difficult to quantify, BLS' influence on the project was starting to put new prospective developers off.

Work that reached the Bika collective were subcontracted among the core devs or propositioned together. The distributed professional Bika LIMS teams on their own then grew strong enough to independently bid on LIMS contracts, and the laboratories did not get that we were equals.

With the same name, either the project or founders' company had to change moniker.

FOSS companies' equity almost entirely resides in their brand, the software is free. For the professional services model to work for them, service organisations require visibility, nobody really spends on marketing.

Bika Lab Systems had seven to ten times more sweat invested than any other group in Bika LIMS and the BLS board resisted a name change without this loss being addressed. Unjust given BLS carried all start-up risk and massive subsequent sweat investment. With lab prospects, the new ACME LIMS would've stood no chance - lab managers as a rule don't read code.

Odoo pulled off a Project name change very successfully over the past 2 years and there is every reason Senaite will do the same. The code is in the hands of the next energetic generation, and built on Bika LIMS after all.

Lemoene

Stand by for T-shirts and hoodies, other paraphernalia, never had time for that!

Pledge

As directors of the Bika Health Foundation and custodians of the Bika Health intellectual property, our pledge to keep the code freely available, and nurture the Bika Health community, remains intact.